'Tis the Season!

It snowed! It was nice and calm (a rarity when it snows in South Dakota), and didn't accumulate too much, so it made for the perfect day to go Christmas-tree hunting. We went to the same cut-your-own lot that we did last year, and came out of there with a gem of a tree. We did learn a few lessons from last year, the most important one being that Christmas trees should be brought into the house through the kitchen (tile), not the garage door and up the steps (carpet carpet carpet). We had significantly fewer pine needles to dig out of our carpet this year (and hopefully we won't still be finding them come March like we were last year).

And we actually had free time this weekend, so we were able to take our tree from this:

to this!:

Decorated Christmas trees have got to be one of my favorite things ever. I'd leave it plugged in all the time if Darrell would let me.

And I know this is a lot little belated, but the day after Thanksgiving Sioux Falls always hosts a Parade of Lights through downtown. This was the first time we had gone together, and we managed to get a few decent pictures (moving objects + Christmas lights = challenging photo subject), but then I lost my USB cord for my camera so I couldn't upload them until this week (ironically, we found the cord as we were moving furniture to put the tree up, so double-glad we did that this weekend!)

Taking a page out of the Macy's Parade book--they also end the parade with Santa Claus!

Hope everyone had a good Monday--I, for one, am glad it's almost over!